


It Ain't Easy Being Green

by Benzaiten (DaughterOfTheWest)



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: AU, Afemgers, Bruce pov, Humor, Karaoke, Rule 63, Rule 63 AU, Stark Spangled Banner - Freeform, Stella is a USO girl, Toni is a sneaky lady, shenanigans ensue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfTheWest/pseuds/Benzaiten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toni, Brooke, and Stella go out for a couple of drinks at a bar. Shenanigans ensue, Toni would be Mercury and Stella would be Bowie, Herman Melville has no place at a bar, and Toni shanghais Stella into giving them a show that she (apparently) never forgot!</p><p>-For the Rule 63 Avengersverse-</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Ain't Easy Being Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mizbingley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizbingley/gifts), [Suzelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzelle/gifts).



> Another fic in the Rule 63 Avengersverse!
> 
> This was originally written as kind of an angsty bit, but it had plot holes the size of Texas so I scrapped the ending and wrote it funny. It's a LOT better now. All thanks and love goes to my lovely editors Suzelle(IRL Brooke Banner) and Mizbingley(IRL Toni Stark) and you should read their stuff because it's kind of fantastic and puts me to shame.
> 
> Enjoy!

“This way, Ladies,” The impish grin on Stark’s face made me uneasy (like she had something in mind), but instead of turning and running out the door I ended up giving a toothless, polite smile. Stella passed me a quizzical glance, eyebrow raised. I pretended not to see but ended up chuckling at the tiling of the floor and pushing my glasses back up my nose.

Back in college, my friends dragged me to a bar at least once a month, but even that felt like too much. I had never been much of a drinker and I was even less of a socialite; on one memorable occasion my best friend from university found me reading Herman Melville’s _The Confidence Man_ in a corner at my own 21st birthday party. A few years later and I had begun to learn the difference between Scotch, Whiskey, and Brandy, but they still never let me forget the whole affair. Didn’t help that Toni had found out about it while doing “background checks” (Stella called it “stalking”), and used it regularly to try and goad me into doing shots with her.

“Come on, my little bookworm,” Toni swung her arm over my shoulders, “This place has got a great Bourbon that’s been aged to _perfection._ What have you got to lose?”

“A lot,” I said through a bitter sigh, meeting her expectant eyes with a moment of ‘ _you know perfectly well what I have to lose_ ,’ which she brushed off as if I had told her that she had a stain on her shirt.

“Fine, fine, I get it, I get it,” She released me and swung into a corner booth table, having removed the velvet roping herself as she strode to her seat. The waiter looked aghast (a drowning fish came to mind) as Toni tossed the ‘reserved’ sign over her shoulder, “Take a seat then, Melville. What’ll you be having, Rogers?”

The statuesque blonde (who was already getting leers from some fratty-looking athletes at the bar) took her seat and primly folded her legs, “I’ll be sticking with a bottle of soda-pop, thanks. Can’t get drunk anyway, so why bother?”

“Aw, Cap, you can’t be serious!” Toni sighed, “That’s not the point! Well okay maybe that’s at least two-thirds of the point but still that’s definitely not the point! We’re here to relax, have a little fun!” She gave up when Stella intentionally averted her eyes and began pulling down the hem of her (rather conservative) pencil skirt. “Okay, okay, I get the message. Garçon? I’ll have a bottle of your finest.”

The waiter looked positively miffed until Toni flipped a bill in his direction, upon which his expression turned a full 180 and he ran back to the bar like he’d struck gold. Toni had that sort of way with people, I found. There were people in this world with a lot of money, there were people in this world with a lot of charisma, but there was no one else in this world with quite the volatile mixture of the two that Antonia Stark had. Even I couldn’t help but be at enthralled by her at first. She was magnetic. She was one of those girls who had straight A’s in high school, a date to the prom, and was head of the soccer team, but still managed to be friends with the Dungeons and Dragons crowd because she was just that all-encompassing kind of person.

After what we had been through as the Avengers, however, I learned to notice where the tiny cracks and fissures ran through her veneer. How, when she thought people weren’t looking, the corners of her mouth would drop, or the lines of stress in her forehead would begin to emerge only to be erased by the next wave of nonchalant smiles. I’m not sure if Stella or Nikita or Claire had noticed this (though knowing the latter two agents and their powers of observation, they probably have) but those tiny glimpses into the mind of the _real_ Toni Stark are probably what make her more than a “genius, billionaire, playgirl philanthropist” (her words). It certainly was a large part of what made her my friend.

“What, did we drop you on Mars or something? What are you staring at?”

My mind returned to the present and I noticed as Toni slid close to Stella, trying to follow her thousand-yard-gaze, “What’s up now?”

“What _is_ that?”

‘That’, from what I could deduce, was the Karaoke stage being unveiled on the other side of the bar. Toni’s grin lit up like a thousand-watt string of Christmas lights, I could feel my face fall with a vague dread, and Stella just looked even more confused. Someone started out on a Blondie number, dancing in that special way only intoxicated people can dance and singing with shrill liquid confidence.

“That, Miss America, is called Karaoke.” Toni began to look more devious than usual.

“It’s the sport of the entirely drunk and utterly shameless,” I muttered, recalling a particularly bad experience of mine that involved vodka, peer pressure, my PhD party and the Aqua song “Doctor Jones”. I wish I couldn’t remember that.

“Brooke, Brooke, seriously. You _have_ to sing ‘It Ain’t Easy Being Green’.” I felt my eyes roll before I even was aware of what I was doing, “Come on, get drunk with me _please_ and let’s do it!” Toni was already pouring me a glass of Bourbon and I had to grab her hand to put the bottle back down on the table.

“So, what do you do? This is the worst singing I’ve ever heard, who hired this girl?” Stella’s red lips pulled into a tight frown as she covered her ears with a wince.

Toni laughed, “The point is that they’re not hired, pin-up Barbie, they’re patrons! They’re people like Brookie here who I bet can hit a _wicked_ high C, am I right? Of course I’m right.”

“Toni, please, I’m not going up there.“

“Fine, Stella will do it with me! It’ll be fun and we can do a duet or something! How about Queen? That’s everyone’s favorite Karaoke, let’s do Under Pressure and you can be—“

“No.” She shot Toni a look that basically said ‘ _I don’t know what you’re asking me to do or what royalty you’re asking me to impersonate but I’m not doing it anyway_ ’ which flew right over Toni’s head as she was already glancing over her shoulder. Gears were turning in the recesses of her brain-- I could see it in her eyes.

“Well, what if I... _convinced_ you?” Her voice became red velvet-- devious and kitschy and wreaking of sneaking suspicions and lazy whorls of smoke. Stella’s eyebrows knit in hesitant (fearful) suspicion while she searched Toni’s face for any sign of just what was about to happen, “There are some, shall we say, _entranced_ gentlemen over at the bar...” Stella glanced over, only to spy the three tomato-faced oafs at the bar who had been eyeing her chest all night, “If you would prefer to stay here I would _love_ to invite them over, as they seem to be enchanted by your--” The dip in Toni’s eyes made Stella blush, “presence. That is, IF you don’t want to go and sing...”

I couldn’t believe that Toni would blackmail the Cap, but then again I totally could. Stella was speechless, eyes narrowed like she was trying to pull a Superman and shoot lasers out of them, shaking her head and sagging back into her chair, “You’re the devil, you know that?” 

“She knows.” I said, half into my glass of water that the waiter had just brought around. Stella put her elbows on the table and let her face fall into her hands. I didn’t quite catch it, but I think Toni winked at me.

“Fine. Fine!” Stella took a deep breath, “Anything is better than...” She shot a pointed glance over to the men trying to look over at their table without them noticing, who also happened to have all the tact of a hippo bashing through a crystal shop. “So how do I do this?”

“Actually, you don’t have to do anything. I picked out a song for you ten minutes ago.”

Stella did a spit-take and even I could feel my eyebrows shoot up my forehead. Cap looked livid, “You WHAT?”

Toni beamed, a scary sight, “Don’t worry, don’t worry... It’s a song that I know you know--”

“Would, uh... Stella? Is that right? Oh, um, would Stella please approach the Karaoke stage? Your song is up after this.”

All three of us turned to watch the makeshift emcee (a stringy man in Woody Allen glasses and a poorly-pressed button up) make his announcement. Stella’s mouth hung open, leaking incredulous silence, and Toni just smiled, smiled, smiled. She almost jumped, though, when the blonde reached over to her glass of Bourbon, downed the whole thing in one gulp, and left with a flick of a perfect curl over her shoulder.

“You know she can’t get drunk, right?” I asked Toni, who chuckled. 

“I know. She just wanted to stick it to me or something for making her sing.”

“Something tells me that this is going to be interesting.” I muttered, sliding into a better view of the stage as the current performer was escorted off stage after almost falling over into the audience. Stella strode onto center stage, taking the microphone just as a trumpet riff pierced through the crowd. Recognition registered on her face-- she _knew_ this song-- and she passed a sighing smile to Toni, who stuck her fingers in her mouth and wolf-whistled. I don’t think I’ve ever met two more opposite people in my life, and I doubt that I’ll ever understand why they’re still friends.

“ _He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way..._ ” 

Toni was grinning like a mad scientist watching it’s Frankenstein come to life when Cap started to sing. 

“ _He had a boogie style that no one else could play.  
He was the top man at his craft,  
but then his number came up and he was gone with the draft.  
He's in the army now, He's blowin' reveille,  
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of company B!_ ”

Cap hadn’t necessarily been a stiff person, but she certainly wasn’t a naturally-gifted dancer or a pop-star in the making. I heard her humming in the locker rooms once while I was walking through the gym in SHIELD HQ, but hadn’t thought much about any musical talents that she might have possessed. She was Cap-- she didn’t know the Stones from the Beatles or the difference between “Baby Got Back” and the Backstreet Boys. Watching her now, though, I remembered reading her file and seeing pictures from the days before Cap became a real soldier. She had been a USO entertainer.

“ _They made him blow a bugle for his Uncle Sam  
It really brought him down because he couldn't jam  
The captain seemed to understand  
Because the next day the cap' went out and drafted a band  
And now the company jumps when he plays reveille  
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B!_ ”

“Did you plan this that whole time?” Toni blinked at me with confusion like she was the most innocent little lamb there ever was, so I continued, “Like, did you plan to come here and make this happen? I know you love messing with Cap and all--”

“What do you think?” She asked me and I knew it was a rhetorical question. I chuckled into my drink.

“ _He blows it eight-to-the-bar  
He can't blow a note if the bass and guitar isn't with 'im  
Ha-ha-hand the company jumps when he plays reveille  
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B!_ ”

Stella was shaking her hips and singing with a big American-Pie grin spread over her face, playing the crowd like they were the soldiers and they just _loved it_. The gorillas at the bar were hooting and hollering and when she started scatting to the horn solo (hitting a high note like it was the punching bag she regularly took off it’s hangings) Toni guffawed.

“Oh my god, look at her go!” She cackled, “I thought this would be fun but this is above and beyond all my expectations. This is brilliant. Do you have a camera? Brooke please tell me you have a camera. Wait-- I have a camera, what am I talking about? I’ve got to show this to the team.”

I had to admit, it was something to see. I don’t think that I could have gone up there without turning green in the face-- and not the rage-monster kind of green, either. The thought of getting on a stage and performing makes me want to puke.

“ _He puts the boys to sleep with boogie every night  
And wakes 'em up the same way in the early bright  
They clap their hands and stamp their feet  
Because they know how he plays when someone gives him a beat  
He really breaks it up when he plays reveille  
He's boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B!_ ”

One insane Rockettes-worthy high-kick later and Toni’s jaw is dropped, the crowd is going wild, and I can’t help but be proud of Cap for taking one of Toni’s pranks and owning it like I never could have known. Toni keeps checking the footage she took over and over again to see if she caught Cap’s panties flashing the audience. The starlet herself walks offstage and slides into the booth again with a little more flush in her cheeks, a little more muss to her hair, and a smug look for Toni. 

“I knew the Andrews Sisters.” 

“Did you now?”

“Three pieces of work, they are. Er, were.”

“I bet they were. Just like you, Goldilocks.” 

Stella shoots her a look, “Look, I did your Karrie-Okay thing, You should be happy now.”

“Very.”

“Good.”

There was a satisfied silence between the two of them-- Stella folded her arms and Toni polished off the last of that Bourbon and I took this as a sign that it was probably time to get back to the lab.

“Hey, guys, I have some stuff cooking that I have to finish up with back at the tower, so I’m going to head out...” Toni grabbed my arm, urging me back to the table.

“But I was just about to get you to sing Muppets music with me!” She beamed, tugging on my sleeve with her biggest puppy-dog eyes in full effect. 

“Raincheck, okay?”

“The things I put up with you rainchecking on, Banner.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle, “I know I know, I mean it though. And Stella?”

She looked up, “Yes?”

“Nice high C.”

She grinned.

I walked out of the bar with my eyes pinned to the exit. A second later I heard a ‘ _slap_ ’ as Toni put money down on the table and a pair of footsteps trailing me. I let my head turn to see them—Stella, with her apple-pie freckled face that looked like it came off of a pin-up poster, and Toni, with her searching eyes and wicked smile. Having teammates, having _friends_ , was a strange experience after years of solitude. It was bittersweet. It was terrifying and fantastic and for the first time in a very long time I felt like I had finally found people who, if anyone, were capable of dealing with whatever destructive force was lurking in the frightening greenness at the bottom of my consciousness.

Well, maybe the Muppets got something right: being green is hard. I know Toni is going to hold me to playing Kermit whether I want to or not.


End file.
